There are teachable moments in everyday things

Tuesday

May 7, 2013 at 8:50 AMMay 7, 2013 at 8:50 AM

Over the weekend, I got to do one of my favorite things in the world — plant flowers outside my home.

I woke up on Saturday excited to go out and get the flats of blooms. I've had a rough few months, and I decided I wanted happy flowers for my beds. I chose three different types of marigolds (light orange, dark orange and yellow), white petunias, pale yellow snapdragons, white pansies and yellow and orange celosia. When I put them all together in the cart, they looked bright and cheerful, which was what I was going for.

When we got home, I put on my gardening gloves and went to work. I expected my 11-year-old son would go into the house and fire up his Xbox, but to my surprise he sat down in the grass next to me and started asking questions about what I was doing.

Why did I choose these flowers? If they lost the blooms that were on them now, would they bloom again? Would the flowers come back next spring? Was I arranging them in some sort of pattern or just planting them willy-nilly?

What ended up happening was I had a wonderful afternoon in the sun with my little boy. I showed him how to dig the holes for the plants with a trowel and pointed out the planting instructions that came with each different type of flower; I explained that because my tiered bed was in the middle of the yard and was always in full sunlight I had to look for plants that didn't need shade to thrive. I showed him how there were inch marks on the trowel so you could be sure to put your plants in the ground an appropriate distance from one another.

My son planted many of the plants. He asked if we were going to buy more for the other beds around the house and if we were, if he might go and help choose flowers. He asked if he could have one of the beds for himself to plant and take care of.

He asked if anyone planted flowers for a living, and by the end of the day he had decided he wanted to be a landscape designer when he grew up. For the rest of the weekend, he busied himself with making sketches of gardens he would plant someday.

It's always amazing to me what wonderful conversations with your children can be born out of seemingly inconsequential things. My son has the attention span of a fruit fly … there are very few things that actually hold his interest … so to discover gardening was something that did was a happy surprise indeed. As our children get older, it becomes harder and harder to find things we can do with them, so discovering them is a great thing.

This was just one more reminder for me that teachable moments with our children are all around … we just have to recognize and embrace them.

Jamie Barrand is the executive editor of The Daily Reporter, Hillsdale Daily News, Bronson Journal and Jonesville Independent. She can be reached at jbarrand@thedailyreporter.com.